


The World Shifts Between Us

by Starships



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 01:50:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2604182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starships/pseuds/Starships
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young first Doctor likes to escape to Earth, sometimes, where he meets Rose and they plot to steal a cherry pie. Of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Previously on Livejournal under thenakedcupcake.

  
The sky is streaked the violent color of her mother’s blood, splattered on the lounge wall, the night she meets him.  


  
He moves like a tiger stalking a thicket, moving uneasily through suburbia so far from the Estates she had fled. She sees him peering through a window that smells suspiciously like pie, raven hair sticking every which way and distractedly sucking a finger, clearly imagining he had just swirled it in fruity filling.  


  
“I don’t think they’d appreciate you climbing into their kitchen, you know,” she says boldly, examining her white sandals instead of this dark stranger.  


  
It was supposed to be her birthday, before everything went wrong at home. Now, it’s the day she finds a thieving nutter miles from home that only wants a sodding cherry pie. 

  
Figures.  


  
“Oh!” he exclaims, whirling on her, finger leaving his mouth with a wet pop. “Oh,” he says again, furrowing his brow and frowning at her, “a human.”  


  
“Well, yeah,” she mumbles, “like you’re not.”  


  
“Course not! If I were,” he says conspiratorially, “I’d never get that pie.”  


  
His voice is dark velvet that slithers through the spring air and rubs her skin, gooseflesh rising to meet it. She wants to feel that voice closer. She also wants him, and his pie, to stay as far away as possible.  


  
She doesn’t know why her heart pitter patters at the depth of his eyes, but she’s also pretty sure life would be easier if it didn’t.  


  
“Y’know, cherry’s my favorite,” she says. “But mum doesn’t bake. Doesn’t need to do to get blokes, s’what she tells me.”  


  
His eyes light up against the sunset, and his mouth twists into a beautiful grin that tells of barely restrained madness. Rose thinks maybe she understands a little why her mum throws everything away for tossers, if they look at her like this. The thought terrifies her, that she could be the next Jackie Tyler, hit in front of her daughter and blood on the entryway walls, but she steps toward this stranger anyway.  


  
“Love cherry pie, eh? Just so happens, so do I. Wanna help me get it?”  


  
“What, y’mean steal it?”  


  
“No no no no no,” he insists, dismissively waving a long fingered hand. “Borrow. Borrow and ingest. Just a tiny bit.”  


  
Rose laughs and covers her mouth to stifle the sound. “What, like me distracting them at the door and you slipping it out the window? Are you mad?”  


  
“Yes, yes!” he exclaims, punching the air excitedly. “Yes to both! What’s your name, you brilliant thing?”  


  
“M’Rose Tyler,” she says shyly, toeing the driveway of the soon to be pie-less. “Who’re you?”  


  
“Oh, Rose Tyler,” he muses, scratching the back of his neck. “I haven’t really decided yet. Don’t like my name at school, haven’t picked one for myself yet. Mum’s rubbish at deciding, anyway.”  


  
“Yeah, so is mine,” she says, giving him her first real smile. “Hope you’re great with kitchen windows.” Her tongue pokes out at him, and she is boldly striding to the front door, knocking firmly and clearing her throat.  


  
He watches this human and his eyes go wide, his grin goes wider, and he sneaks to the side of the house to wait.  


  
Maybe they were wrong when they told him about Earth.  


  
The door opens.  


  
“Excuse me, I’m so sorry!” says Rose politely, making her voice shift a little higher, younger, decidedly more educated. “I’ve lost my dog, you see, and my Mother will simply be beside herself if I return home without him, and I can’t bear to leave him out here all alone. May I use your telephone, call her to come help me look for him? I’ll be but two minutes, I promise.”  


  
“’Course, my dear!” says a female voice, and he hears the door click shut. He darts forward, sonics the screen out in four seconds flat, silently slides the barely open window all the way to the side, and lifts the hot pie from its cooling perch.  


  
Two minutes pass, as promised. Rose leaves and thanks the woman profusely, promising her she’ll get home safe and thank you so much and doesn’t something smell delicious.  


  
Cheeky girl, he thinks. He likes it.  


  
Rose tells the woman to enjoy her evening, and primly walks away down the street, disappearing around a warmly lit corner.  


  
He runs to catch up with her, and decides he really should figure out his name so that he can tell it to her. He’s struck by how much he wants to hear it tumble from her lips, knows it would be right no matter which sound he chooses. 

  
He sees a flash of white and blonde ahead, and she’s giggling like bells; he’s still running after her, feet pumping and both hearts drumming and he’s never felt such thrill in his life. 

  
They collapse together in a park blocks away, laughing and touching shoulders and breathing deep the scent of their smuggled treasure. He enthusiastically tells her that for her brilliance, the first bite should be hers.  


  
“We’ve no forks!” she laughs, “and I’ll burn my fingers.”  


  
“Well,” he says haughtily, “it’s a good thing my biology is simply fantastic then, isn’t it?” And he’s scooping those long, slender fingers into the bubbling pie, smearing them wetly with red juice that slides like a kiss down his knuckles, bits of sweet crust dotting the fruit like freckles. He blows gently, and holds his prize closer to her mouth, a clear invitation.  


  
She blushes hotly but looks at him through her lashes as she leans forward, shyly opening her mouth and circling it around his fingers and pulling the dessert from them, eyes fluttering shut in ecstasy as she tastes the bite of tart cherries and the sugar in the running red juice, the crunch in the crust, and the ache of something her mind suggests is time racing through his fingers like magic or ether or something else she was never raised to believe in. 

  
“Adventure,” she realizes out loud. “You taste like adventure.”  


  
Slowly, so she can see it coming, he moves closer. His vibrant eyes that she swears keep shifting colors are so close, and questioning, cocky but still so wide and vulnerable. She wants to be part of him.  


  
She closes the distance, pink and sugared lips crushing against his as his tongue quests for remnants of cherries against her, his still red fingers absent mindedly tangling in her hair. It is a clumsy, messy affair, and suddenly she is laughing against his mouth and opening for him, and he sweeps inside, grinning as the sun is finally under the horizon and they are both well and truly intoxicated on delicious madness and stolen cherry pie.  


  
He rests his forehead to hers, noses tangling together like awkward dancers. “You taste like adventure, too,” he whispers, and curls his fingers into hers.  


  
Until the pie is gone, he tells her stories. They kiss when he pauses, and sometimes she grabs his hand by the wrist and cleans it of all fruity remnants. She soaks up every moment like she’s storing them for a long, long winter, and falls a little more in love for every minute that ticks and every cherry that disappears into one of their mouths.  


  
He walks her home, and thanks her, and holds her hand. He says she is fantastic, brilliant, and he’ll see her again. When he can’t find his adventure, he’ll find her.  


  
She isn’t afraid to go back inside anymore, but she snogs him thoroughly for courage, just in case.  


  
Three years later, after Jimmy and Mickey and a bloke behind the bleachers whose name she can never remember, she knows that none of them will ever taste the same. So when a stranger with cerulean eyes that shift color every now and then asks her to travel the stars, she stamps out the hope and recognition that flares in her heart, telling her it’s him she’s been looking for.  


  
She says no and tastes cherries in every word, smells spring wind and feels cool blades of grass under her feet. She remembers how they collided like the only celestial bodies left in the universe.  


  
And she knows.  


  
And she says yes.  


  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor gets a name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I didn't want you to think Earth girls were easy."  
> "What is 'easy'?"  
> "This is 'easy'."
> 
> -Earth Girls are Easy
> 
> “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and take a look around once in awhile, you’ll miss it.”
> 
> -Ferris Bueller

  
Three hearts drum together in the dark while impossibly sapphire eyes follow her butter-soaked fingers. Something inside him is pulled taut when he is with her, shining like a copper wire in the sun, restless, searching.  


  
She looks at him, curling mischievous fingers around a kernel of golden movie popcorn. Warm enough to make a star supernova, she smiles.  


  
Ah.  


  


  


  
It’s not just about the girl, he tells himself.  


  
It’s the air of earth, that white cotton blossom smell of spring smudged only by bits of London smog and her perfume. It’s the verdancy of people, the delight of love and Christmas and jam. And marmalade. And berry preserves. And--  


  
When she leaves the candy shop to find him lounging against a nearby street lamp, she presents him her open hands. Inside them is a myriad of colored little things that are startlingly vibrant and rich in the sun. He delicately plucks a yellow one, popping it eagerly into his mouth with his long fingers while her eyes dance.  


  
“Jelly babies,” she says.  


  
Maybe it’s not the girl. But in his bones, he knows nothing would taste like this if she didn’t look at him like that.  


  


  


  
“Life moves pretty fast,” she tells him one night, finger lazily circling his belly button while they lie in the fort they have made of her bed. For the last six nights, he has snuck in her bedroom window. Some nights they sneak back out, together; some nights he pointedly corrects her biology homework, and all nights they are never more than a quick breath away from each other.  


  
“Not for me,” is his sad return. His dark blue eyes are twinkling like the stars that promise he hasn’t seen anything yet.  


  
“No?”  


  
“No,” and he hides his face in her neck, because her smell makes him feel safe.  


  
“How do I know it won’t be so fast I’ll miss it?” she whispers, with all the uncertainty of one barely sixteen.  


  
He kisses the fragile fluttering of her pulse instead of answering.  


  


  


  
The mad sprint has set fire in their lungs and legs, powerful muscle fibers jubilant in the summer night air. There are maybe a dozen feet pounding in pursuit, the asphalt singing the thundering song to their retreating bodies.  


  
“I don’t think,” and her breath is heaving while she runs, “your people like you very much.”  


  
“Disapproving, dusty, boring, undersexed old men,” he huffs indignantly. “I might steal from them, just a little, to see you,” and he isn’t out of breath at all. “They just don’t know what love is.”  


  
She grabs his wrist and tucks them quickly behind an antique shop, pressing him into the brick with her flushed body. He unconsciously presses his pelvis into her at the contact, twining his fingers into her welcoming belt loops.  


  
“Love?” she whispers into his mouth as thirteen shouting Time Lords run past.  


  
“Let me show you,” he says, and does.  


  


  


  
He’d only borrowed it. Hadn’t meant to keep it so long, really. It’s not like he thought the others would miss it, broken chameleon circuit and all.  


  
Wouldn’t miss it like he’d miss it, anyway. Her daffodil hair thrust against the blue wooden panels while he tastes her neck is a view unmatched by the heights of the Citadel and the rising of the suns.  


  
He’ll never know how he stayed away so long, and yet he is already feeling the call and whispering how soon he’ll be back.  


  


  


  
He’s been away six weeks, and before his wild raven hair crests her bedroom window, he hears her: sultry, low, husky. Rassilon, she’s singing and it sets his hearts ablaze. Among other things.  


  
_“Elvis was a coola shaker  
_

  
_Marley Ziggy melody maker  
_

  
_She’s a Bond babe kick some ass—“_   


  
And then he’s in her room, staring at her, agape.  


  
_“Doctor!”_ she squeaks in surprise. He pauses, alarmed, as Spice World continues along without her. She’s wearing only a vest and knickers, and she clearly had been brushing her hair. And singing. And dancing. In her knickers.  


  
To Spice World.  


  
_“’Doctor, no, this girl’s got class,’”_ she recites. “S’the next line.”  


  
“Really, Rose? Spice World?”  


  
She saunters up to him, tugging on the front of his shirt. “Really, Doctor, this girl’s got class,” she murmurs, smirking into his mouth.  


  
“Mmm,” he hums, and his fingers curl above the waistband of her knickers. She hisses in a breath and thinks, finally, this is when he’s going to be a real bloke and shag her rotten until she can’t even walk as far as the bed.  


  
The first time, and her heart trembles for it.  


  
“Get your trousers,” he says huskily into her ear instead. “We’re going on an adventure I will deny vehemently for the rest of my life.”  


  
If he misses her pout, its only because he was distracted by hips sashaying their way into denim.  


  


  


  
“You know, it’s smaller on the outside,” she states, still sulking at being asked to put her trousers on instead of having them ripped off.  


  
He is staring at her like she’s dribbled on herself.  


  
“That’s all you can say? I show you my magnificent ship—“  


  
“S’not yours, you stole it, remember?”  


  
_“My_ magnificent ship,” he continues firmly. “Who brings me to see your lovely self—“  


  
“With six week gaps.”  


  
“Cheeky!” he admonishes. “I’ve not even told you what she can do!”  


  
Rose bounces on the balls of her feet, nearly skipping over to him at the console. His raw joy is infectious. “Then show me, if you’re so impressive.”  


  
He puffs his chest and grins like the Cheshire. “Oh, I am,” and the heat in his voice makes her squeeze her legs together and dream of everything that means.  


  
They land at the London premiere of Spice World. Rose is beside herself, jumping up and down too much to realize she’s in 1997, but she still manages to get the autograph of every girl except Posh, who was a little too busy ogling her ride for Rose to not go up and plant a possessive kiss on that gob of his.  


  
“I love you, too,” she breathes against him, and he crushes her to him so hard she sees spots and doesn’t care.  


  


  


  


  
“Time!” she marvels.  


  
“As much of it as you want.”  


  
And oh, she wants.  


  


  


  
They’ve always told him this kind of thing is risky. Reapers, they threatened, could tear your body to pieces and fracture the world before you, leaving you helpless and on your knees.  


  
Which was ridiculous, because he is clearly too incredible for that sort of thing.  


  
And so he and Rose hold hands while they watch the under-sevens, a much, much younger version of his love Rose flourishing on her dismount with only a tiny wobble.  


  
“I rather liked it when you called me Doctor,” he muses, watching Jackie Tyler spin her daughter around, laughing and happy even with a smudge of purple still healing on the high arch of her cheek.  


  
Rose laughs, caught in the warm air of him and in the mixed feelings of her past. “I’m going to tell the whole universe forever you got your name from _Lady is a Vamp._ ”  


  
She doesn’t see his horrified face because he’s trying desperately to tickle her smugness away, but she knows its there anyway.  


  


  


  
“This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”  


  
“You know the rules. Take them off.”  


  
“I’ve never liked rules.”  


  
“Off.”  


  
“Oi!”  


_  
_

  
“Off!”  


  
He huffs indignantly while he shucks his trousers and his losing poker hand.  


  
She’s still got her bra, knickers, and purple left sock, but he’s only got his pants left to his (new) name. And a TARDIS key, which he will insist counts as an article of clothing when the time comes.  


  
Let no one say Rose Tyler is not ferocious with her two queens high.  


  
When she walks to him, fingers in his waistband, he grips her hips and bumps her nose with his in his haste to kiss her. They are awkward, all boney angles and breathless sighs and blood set afire with the need for each other.  


  
She is a little shy when she says, “I didn’t want you to think Earth girls were easy.”  


  
He chuckles, a purely pleased and masculine sound. “And what is ‘easy’?”  


  
She cups him. “This is easy.”  


  
They tumble to the floor and only manage to remove her remaining sock and shove his pants down just enough before they are pressing together, wet and thick and electric in the feeling of newness. He pushes her knickers to the side and there is no foreplay, only this clumsy touch and moment in space and time, and it is perfect. She jabs him with an elbow while learning to steer, and he comes a little too soon but still makes it up to her, and in the end they are laughing breathlessly into each other, still partly clothed, still inside, and a mess of cards litters the floor around them.  


  


  


  


  
For all the universe that waits for them, neither can see beyond the private darkness of the bedroom, of every sigh and sound, of the Doctor and his Rose striking together like hammer and anvil, forging their endless new world.  



End file.
